


With Baited Breath

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Like Water [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Chubby Inquisitor, Drabble, F/M, Falling In Love, Nature, POV Blackwall, Pining, Storm Coast (Dragon Age), Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 14:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15731601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Blackwall always frets over the Lavellan he is in love with. Even when she is just gathering herbs on the sea coast.





	With Baited Breath

Blackwall does not get seasick easily. Not like that pampered Lord Dorian, who turns a washed-out shade of green and begins to complain the very instant he as much as lays eyes on a moving mass of water.  
  
But there are these moments… Moments when he watches Lavellan walk, with her usual fluid, unhurried grace, along a narrow dark ribbon made out of flat, slippery eight-sided rock tops that just barely jut out of the sloshing, whipping froth.  
  
She puts one bare-toed foot in front of the other very slowly and carefully, daintily extending her leg, which is slightly bent in the knee, while her leather strap Dalish leggings highlight the shape of her pillowy, broad thighs and smaller, rounded calves. Maker’s balls, she has beautiful legs… Like she was one of those languidly smiling, many-folded marble statues that adorn the fountains in Val Royeaux. Except that, instead of tricking down in thin, sparkling jets, the water around her soars into enormous glassy walls, which then come crashing down, ramming into the rain-sleek dwarven monuments along the coast with a head-splitting roar. A roar that rips right through any intrusive, titillating fantasies that Blackwall might have about kneeling before those ample, generously sculpted legs and kissing them from the ankle all the way up. Before those fantasies can even properly form. And when they are dispelled, comes the sickness.  
  
A nauseating jolt, as if his heart is flying up and down as rapidly as the foamy crests of the waves. A chill that gnaws through his very bone marrow - to replace the warm flush of admiring her, of wanting her, despite his better judgement and oaths to keep her from getting dragged into the mess that is being loved by the likes of him. Wanting all of her, from the legs to the big, pear-like body, and the dimple-elbowed arms - archer’s arms, so very strong under the cushion of softness - and the bottomless eyes, inky like black currant cordial, and just as prone to going to your head if you indulge too much. But he can never tell how much is too much, not with her…  
  
The chill grows stronger, hardening into icy spears that go right through Blackwall’s lungs and chest and pit of his stomach. He must come after her, he tells himself; make sure that she does not slip and fall… But the path is too narrow, and if he caught up with her and tried to ‘support’ her, he would only knock them both out of balance. Or… Or would he?  
  
As he debates with himself, Lavellan almost disappears from view, the water spray smudging the outlines of her shapely figure into a vague greenish-brown cloud. It is not long before she is gone completely, melting into the clouds of leaden fog. This is always when the sickness reaches its worst. Blackwall strains his eyes, ready to swear that the salty mists of the sea slash at his poor burning eyeballs; his heart is wild in his mouth, hammering into his teeth while a metallic ooze seems to colour the back of his throat a bloody red; and his hand grows stiff, contorted, on the hilt of his blade (out of instinct, of course; he can’t actually shake a sword at the sea and order it to leave his lady in peace).  
  
And at long last, when the sickness mounts into an agony, and Blackwall begins to turn into a worse clammy wreck than Dorian, Lavellan comes back. She always comes back, diving out of the fog with a smile of soft, quiet joy, holding a bundle of sogvy herbs in her hands.  
  
‘I got the spindleweed!’ she announces, screaming over the clamour of the waves as she makes the same carefully calculated dance back.  
  
‘I will be making so much of that healing mist solution when I get back to camp!’  
  
'Most excellent, my dear!’ Vivienne calls back to her. Somehow, she still has not tripped over on the wet gravel, even though her heels are about as tall as half of her mage staff. But Blackwall does not care to glance aside and figure out how she is managing this feat: he is too busy learning how to breathe again.


End file.
